He never promised to be kind. Maybe Caneo never learned how; he might use that as an excuse. But he's still angry with her. It's a simmering rage, and the sight of her injury fuels it because she ran away and he resented it and now his resentment hurts? It should; it should, and he can't quite let that go. We were friends, he wants to say. If things had gone differently, if he hadn't been already crooked and she hadn't been injured by the things before him.... Maybe they wouldn't hurt each other. Maybe he would be happy.

        He's far away as he regards her; far away, though if he reached out he might just manage to touch her, still. He no longer really wants to. And her voice is soft, riddled with the same hurt clutching at his heart, and he can't fix either of them. One of his ears twitches as the snake curls around it, watching. She's had very little opinion on any of this, save to side with him in a show of blind survivalism. She doesn't understand; she's curious now, though, and her forked tongue is pink against the dark scales of her face, the huge ink wells she has for eyes. From the corner of Caneo's vision, she's terribly small. He glances at her, and at the Fire Dancer once more. "It's from a story," he says quietly, almost sullen. He doesn't want to feel — this — crashing in his chest.

        Her next question is more difficult. More, because he never posed it to himself. Why look for her? Why breathe? Why study the far lights of the stars? Because his life is not his life without her; because he is not him without the flickering light of friendship she had offered him long ago, when he was lonely and so stupid when it came to this teeming world. Caneo frowns, most of his facades fallen away so that emotion ghosts across his face the way reflections race beneath glass. "You told me to." He blinks, confused more than anything else as he recalls their last meeting, the tenor of her voice. It was the last thing she'd said, and he'd held it. Of course he had. "We were supposed to stick together," he adds, but the failure there is not entirely her fault. Hadn't he, after all, gone away? If he's angry still, it's being overtaken by exhaustion.

        Silence greets her last apology for a long time, but it's a softer silence than before. His regard is wary (so prepared to pull and run) as if he never learned how to do anything else. After how many years? Sorry. But he can't bring himself to be sorry, to be small again, weak and easily torn open. Is it so dangerous, if she's the only one here? If the snake already threads her way between his ribs...? If only he were whimsical and bright again. Dreaming and naive again. If he could trust himself to feel about Tandavi the same way he once felt about the moon. Always, fear moves in him like disease. "It's okay," he sighs, a little too late. There's some shadow of the boy in him still; the boy isn't easy to kill. "I went away before, too. I hate this place, but.... I missed you." Caneo frowns, sincere and irritated and on edge, always on edge, prepared to have everything he gives up turned against him.